For all their current popularity and lubricity, novel-romances are old,
old stories. They began flooding the market in England during the last
decades of the 18th century; they were part of the tide that engulfed
the certainties of the Enlightenment. Unlike the newly invented gothic
tale, which stressed the pleasures of terror, the sentimental romances
emphasized the happy sensation of a good cry. They also quickly debased
the emerging philosophical notion that feelings were the most reliable
guide to truth. If so, reasoned the romancers, then the person with...